Focusing on Executive Skills – Skills for Learning and for Life

Co-authored by Rebecca Nielson, Vice-Principal, Senior School

Why executive skills?

Last school year—ahead of our GNS Unplugged pilot initiated this year—we researched the impact being constantly ‘plugged in’ was having on our adolescents. One resource that received a lot of attention at the time was the book The Anxious Generation by Jonathan Haidt. Haidt reports that the opportunity cost associated with a phone-based childhood included four harms: social deprivation, sleep deprivation, attention fragmentation, and addiction. The concept of attention fragmentation stood out for us because we had heard this before in a presentation by AJ Juliani who used the term continuous partial attention when he addressed our staff at our GNS Professional Development day. Juliani talked about how students were in a constant state of divided attention, and that this was raising their overall stress levels and leading to underperformance.

Haidt states that “[A] phone-based childhood is likely to interfere with the development of executive functions”(p129) and this got us wondering about our students and their level of executive skill acquisition. As an International Baccalaureate school, the Approaches to Learning (ATL) skills are embedded in our teaching and learning. These include Social Skills, Research Skills, Thinking Skills, Communication Skills and Self-Management Skills. Our subject departments have each created a scope and sequence for students to acquire these skills; but there is still the sense that when a student underperforms it is in all likelihood due to lagging organisational skills leading to missed deadlines, that last-minute night-before effort, lower assessment grades and so on. 

With this in mind, we added an educational component, for parents and teachers, focused specifically on executive function skills to our GNS Unplugged pilot. With the help of author Peg Dawson, who co-wrote the Smart But Scattered series of books, we hosted two informational sessions in November, one for the teachers and one for the parents. (A recording of the Dr. Peg Dawson’s presentation on Executive Skills and her slides are now available on the parent Publications and Resources board.) In January, our teachers will continue to work with Peg on specific aspects of teaching these skills within their classes.  

Why do executive skills matter?

One thing we know we can do for students to help them grow their ‘future-facing skills’ is to help them develop their executive skills. These are the skills as adults, we have learned over time, but our kids are still developing them. It is difficult for adults to remember a time when they didn’t have these skills because it seems like they have always had them, but they haven’t. 

This article is intended to share some of the learning we took away from our recent session with researcher, Peg Dawson, on executive skills in hopes that it is helpful. By no means are we experts in this area. We have experience, education and research behind us.

One of the most important things about parenting is the relationship you have with your child. Understanding where they are in the development of their executive skills could help you better understand them. If you know where they are coming from, you can know why they might not think to do their homework, empty the dishwasher, or look ahead to the next day. Rather, they will choose to go out with friends, play video games, or look at their phones. 

3 Key Concepts about Executive Skills

Peg shared that:

1. These brain-based skills take a minimum of 25 years to reach full-maturation and are the skills required to execute tasks. The frontal cortex is responsible for executive skills and this is the last part of the brain to develop fully. 
2. Until these skills fully mature, it’s the job of parents and teachers (and adults who work with kids) to act as surrogate frontal lobes. She noted that somewhere around Middle School, things go horribly wrong as our expectations go up, but actual brain development is not aligned, which leads to a lot of frustration. 
3. It is also our job as parents, teachers and adults to help kids to grow their own executive skills. 

What are executive skills?

Peg Dawson provided a list of executive skills, which are the building blocks of school success. They are the skills that allow us to plan, prioritize and execute tasks. She identified both foundational and advanced skills. This list includes some key strategies that take 5-10 minutes each day to help develop the skills.

Foundational Skills

These six foundational executive skills are being developed in elementary school students. The order in which they are listed is typically the order of development. 

1. Response inhibition: This is the ability to stop and think before you say or do something. This ability to resist the urge to say or do something allows for time to evaluate a situation and how our behaviour might impact it. 

Key strategy: teach children to WAIT and STOP!

Games: What time is it Mr. Wolf?, Mother May I, Simon Says

2. Working memory: This is the ability to hold information while you are performing a complex task.

Key Strategy: Pair verbal instructions with a VISUAL

3. Emotional control: This is the ability to manage emotions to get things done.

Key strategy: Start by acknowledging how the student feels, no solutions, name it to tame it

4. Flexibility: The ability to revise plans in the face of obstacles, setbacks, new information or mistakes. It is related to adaptability to changing conditions. People who are inflexible think there is one right answer and one possible outcome. They may have trouble re-grouping.

Key strategy: Help kids find multiple pathways (Plan B)

5. Sustained attention: The capacity to maintain attention to a situation or task despite distractibility, fatigue or boredom.

Key strategy: Break the task into smaller pieces, teach kids to monitor whether they are paying attention or not

6. Task initiation: The ability to begin projects without undue procrastination, in an efficient or timely fashion.

Key strategy: Have students make a plan with a start time, and make sure they start it at a certain time, teachers can have them commit to a time

Advanced Skills 

These are the skills that we typically see being developed in senior school and beyond. The order here is more arbitrary and can vary greatly. Middle School parents and teachers should not expect students to be proficient with these advanced skills, they are just emerging. Even Grade 9 to 10 students are struggling to develop advanced skills.

• Planning/Prioritizing: The ability to create a roadmap to reach a goal or to complete a task. It also involves being able to make decisions about what is or isn’t important to focus on.

Key Strategy: Plan with kids rather than for kids.

• Organization: The ability to create and maintain systems to keep track of information or materials.

Key Strategy: Start small and keep it simple.

• Time Management: The capacity to estimate how much time one has, how to allocate it, and how to stay within time limits and deadlines. It also involves a sense that time is important.

Key Strategy: Practice time estimation.

• Goal-directed persistence: The capacity to have a goal, follow through to the completion of the goal and not be put off or distracted by competing interests.

Key Strategy: Have the child practice setting small goals

• Metacognition: This tends to be one of the last skills to develop. It is an awareness that you have thoughts and you can use those thoughts to solve problems and understand the world. It is the ability to stand back and take a bird’s-eye view of oneself in a situation. It is an ability to observe how you solve problems. It may also include self-monitoring and self-evaluative skills (e.g., asking yourself, How am I doing or How did I do?). As IB learners, our students begin developing this skill early on as they work through the ATL skills, in particular reflection. 

Key Strategy: Encourage self-reflection following successes

Here is the good news—everyone can learn these skills. Just like learning any new skill, it takes teaching, intentional practice, strategies, and time. By the time your student is 25 years old, you can expect their brain to be fully developed and these skills will become more second nature to them. In the meantime, what can you do?

Be patient. Read and learn more about executive skills, and talk about them with your student. Model them and practice them yourself.